"They are indeed," joined in Nita, "but how you have penetrated the hopeless exteriors of these people, as we saw them on our way here, found the germs of promise and developed them, will always remain an unfathomable mystery for me," she declared. "I confess I understand your skill less than I do that of the sculptor who makes the marble express beauty, thought and feeling,--and his work would be infinitely more to my taste. I think nothing more distasteful than contact with people can be,--and when it must be daily----" She shrugged her shoulders in conclusion expressively. Steve smiled back at her for he knew she did not think of him as one of these people with whom she could not bear the thought of daily contact. "Now confess, don't you get dreadfully tired of it all?" she persisted, looking with real appeal into his face as though she would draw him away from it if she could. "Unspeakably, sometimes," he smiled back again, then looking beyond her over the mountains he added simply, "but I belong here." And uncomprehending as she would ever be, she turned at last lightly away and walking to the outer door stepped out upon the campus, leaving her sister and Steve for a little talk alone, which she was sure they would like. When she was gone, Mrs. Polk laid a hand upon Steve's arm and said softly: "Some day, Steve, everything will come right," looking expressively into his eyes, and he knew she meant between himself and Mr. Polk, a subject that had not been mentioned since she came. "I catch beautiful prophecies sometimes of all this human desert blossoming as a rose," she went on with her old gay enthusiasm, "and I am fully persuaded now, as I never have quite been since you left us, that you have chosen your work wisely. I had to come at last and see for myself. "But are you going to live your life alone, Steve, dear," she asked after a moment wistfully, "with no sweet home ties?" "I do not know, little mother," he said gravely. His mind went instantly to the old cabin home and little Steve, but he couldn't tell even her of the family life there now,--nor yet of the mystic vision which had intruded upon his brooding thought. His sudden smile flashed over the seriousness of his face as he replied at last, "I have been too busy and too poor to think about it so far." She did not smile in return, but catching both his hands in hers she looked up at him with motherly insistence, and asked: "Have you never loved any dear girl? Is there no sweet face that sometimes steals into the little home which nestles always in every true man's innermost heart?" Her strong mother-love had surely lent her a mystic's insight and compelling power! Instantly into the dim outline of the vision of his brooding thought which he had hitherto constantly thrust aside, came with a distinctness that startled him, a childish face framed in yellow curls above a little white pinafore!